The announcement was equal parts anticlimactic and disingenuous. For the past two weeks, Harris has been shamelessly teasing her inevitable declaration in public appearances and on the talk-show circuit, while plugging her self-serving memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, and an accompanying children’s book, Superheroes Are Everywhere.

In the memoir, the 54-year-old lawmaker characterizes her work as San Francisco district attorney (2004-2010) and California attorney general (2011-2017) as that of a “progressive prosecutor” who combined the role of top law enforcement officer with that of a social justice warrior. She also declares that “it is a false choice to suggest you must either be for the police or for police accountability. I am for both.”

Harris, whom California voters overwhelmingly elected in 2016 to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, lays claim to the mantle of the civil rights movement, in part because her mother, who is from India, and her father, who is from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, where both participated in civil rights activism.

Harris writes that she grew up attending demonstrations and believing in equal justice under the law. And she asserts that she supports criminal-justice reform and wants to end the mass incarceration that has become commonplace in the U.S.

But a survey of Harris’s prosecutorial career reveals the cynicism of her attempt to repackage herself as a progressive crusader, as well as her choice of MLK Day to announce her candidacy for the nation’s highest office. Unlike the slain civil rights icon, Harris has dedicated much of her life to putting people — most of them people of color — behind bars. King, who fought for equality for all Americans, was arrested and jailed many times.

Body Cams: In 2015, Harris backed police groups when she rejected a “one-size-fits-all approach” and refused to certify statewide standards for police-worn body cameras, Three years later, as a U.S. senator, she abruptly found a soft spot for body cams, introducing a bill that would require the Department of Homeland Security to set up pilot body-cam programs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

Marijuana: Harris recently signed on as a co-sponsor of New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s Marijuana Justice Act, which would end federal prohibitions on marijuana. Appearing with Booker in a video for NowThisNews.com in May 2018, Harris explained that African-Americans are disproportionately affected by laws that outlaw weed, saying, “The War on Drugs was a war on communities.”

Prosecutorial Misconduct

Time and time again during her tenure as California attorney general, Harris and her office defended instances of prosecutorial and police misconduct.

A handful of examples:

In 2015, Harris filed an appeal after a judge threw out a conviction in a child-molestation case in which a county prosecutor had inserted a false confession into the defendant’s interview transcript. Fortunately, the appeals court didn’t see it that way.

Harris appealed the release of inmate Daniel Larsen — who’d been sentenced to 27 years to life under California’s draconian three-strikes law — after a judge found that Larsen was falsely convicted of possession of a concealed knife. Larsen served thirteen years before his conviction was overturned, but Harris wanted to keep him locked up…on a technicality. Her office contended that Larsen’s attorneys had filed their appeal six months too late. The Ninth Circuit denied the AG’s appeal, and a federal magistrate ordered that Larsen be set free.

When a judge removed the Orange County District Attorney from a high-profile murder case because the office was found to have been part of a massive scandal — a scandal that involved tainted evidence and jailhouse snitches who provided false testimony under oath — Harris challenged the judge’s ruling. She refused to back down until the state appeals court rejected her appeal (and meted out a spanking to the attorney general’s office for good measure).

About Stephen Lemons

Stephen Lemons is an award-winning investigative journalist with more than 20 years of experience covering everything from government corruption to white-supremacist gangs. In addition to Front Page Confidential, his work has appeared in Phoenix New Times, the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report magazine.

About Front Page Confidential

Front Page Confidential is published by Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin and edited by Stephen Lemons. We aim to bring our readers important news, commentary, and historical perspectives on all matters related to free speech — from how it affects us all to how it will affect our future rights to speak freely.

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